


I’m Battling Monsters (I’ll Give You Anything)

by ssstrychnine



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: AU, AU silliness, F/M, effie the vampire slayer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-03
Updated: 2012-09-03
Packaged: 2017-11-13 11:04:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/502837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssstrychnine/pseuds/ssstrychnine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Effie is chosen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I’m Battling Monsters (I’ll Give You Anything)

**Author's Note:**

> So, I guess I like writing Effie-centric fics that span years.

When Effie Trinket turns sixteen, a paranoid looking guy who is slightly too old to be hanging around a highschool tells her she’s the chosen one. 

“Well I’d rather have a Gaultier corset, but I guess it’s the thought that counts,” she says and he stares at her like she’s speaking another language. “You started it,” she sniffs.

The next day she lets him buy her a brioche because he’s quite cute for someone who is at least twenty five. She threatens him a couple of times because he gets hilariously fierce when she mentions how many guns her daddy owns, like he could tie them in knots with his eyes. He keeps talking about vampires and slaying and he’s constantly drinking from a silver flask and she’s beginning to think he’s one of those tin hat guys who tend to live in basements and don’t believe in microwaves.

“I just don’t think we’re on the same _wave length_ , or something,” she says, trying to speak his language.

On the third day he throws a knife at her while her back is turned and she’s caught it perfectly before she even realises what she’s doing. She blacks his eye for that and he teaches her some excellent ways of swearing and she goes home feeling dreadfully uneasy. 

On the fourth day she kills a vampire and Haymitch tells her he’s her Watcher. At home she sits in the shower until the hot water runs out and she dyes her hair sky blue.

When Effie Trinket turns seventeen, her hair is candy floss pink and someone kills her. It doesn’t stick but it does call up another slayer named Katniss with a long brunette braid and an alarming penchant for fire and crossbows. Her Watcher is called Peeta and he’s in love with her and Effie slings her arm around Haymitch’s shoulder and tells him they’re next. It’s funny because half the time he seems to hate her.

A vampire kills her family and that does stick and she stakes the culprit with the six inch heel of one of her gold Alexander McQueen booties. It’s prom. She drinks from Haymitch’s flask and they dance in the graveyard and he lets her lead.

When Effie Trinket turns eighteen, Haymitch tests her and she quits because he was the only person she had left and she’d _trusted_ him. She disappears to another city and she hangs up her stake and she dreams of him sometimes, when she isn’t dreaming of the end of the world and the white-haired, snake-eyed vampire he’d sent after her and the crystals that he’d used to make her weak and _always_ roses. Her hair is mint green and her lips are frosted gold and she can get a drink in any bar even without ID. 

She falls in love with him without him around and she forgives him a hundred times without saying anything and then she goes back. She doesn’t explain where she was or why not even when he’s apologising like he hasn’t got any words that aren’t I’m sorry. They patch themselves up and the vampire population, which had grown exponentially without a slayer around, is beaten into submission. Effie colours her hair grass green. 

Haymitch tells her why he drinks, he tells her about his first potential, a girl called Maysilee who lasted two years before she was caught and sired, a vampire called Maysilee who he had to kill. He still snarls at her and she still snaps at him but she thinks they might be friends.

When Effie Trinket turns nineteen, she learns that Haymitch keeps a knife under his pillow, next to a stake. She had been drinking at his house in celebration and she crawls into his bed after he’s fallen asleep and he has the blade at her throat and the stake at her heart in seconds and she laughs. He lets her stay, he lets her wrap her arms around him and bow her head against his neck, he strokes her fairy hair. 

They find a thousand ways to touch without it turning sexual. They don’t kiss. Their skin is warm and so is the night and holding hands is the closest to _something more_ that they get. They curl up on Haymitch’s couch, they pass the flask between them, they listen to good music and watch terrible television. Haymitch thinks he’s too old for her when Effie lays her heels on his thigh so she can paint her nails silver.

“You’re spoiled, princess,” he growls. “I ought to kick you out on your ass.” 

“But you won’t.” 

Effie thinks he’s too good for her.

She gets a day job as a roller skating waitress. She didn’t think restaurants like that even existed anymore but she likes the candy striped uniform and the free malt shakes. Her hair is back to candy floss because it makes her feel like Frenchie from Grease, a beauty school dropout, not a gore soaked, vampire slaying _high school_ dropout. 

She moves in with him because her parents house is too big and empty and strange. Officially she has her own room but more often than not, in the middle of the night, Haymitch already awake with nightmares, she slips under his sheets and their ankles cross and she curls her fingers under the collar of the old black t-shirt he sleeps in. He always smells like the metal of his knives and the sharpness of liquor. 

When Effie Trinket turns twenty they patrol and she stands up tall on a tombstone to kiss him. For a second he forgets himself, he presses his hands flat against the small of her back, he licks into her open mouth, then he realises who she is and who he is and he startles away. She overbalances, jumps off the stone then sits down, scowling like thunder.

“I’m sorry,” Haymitch says and her scowl deepens.

“You’re an idiot.” 

“ _You’re_ too young,” he says, fumbling with the flask in his inside coat pocket. He takes a long gulp, winces, shuts his eyes. “I’m your _Watcher_.” 

“So what? I bet it’s happened a ton of times before. I bet it’s expected or something,” she eyes him critically, runs her fingers over the stakes in her belt. “What did you think this whole last year was? I sleep in _your bed_.” 

“Oh my god,” Haymitch groans, downing the rest of the flask in one. He sways where he’s standing and his face is clouded over with anger, his hand keeps ghosting to the places he keeps knives. 

“I’m not going to die, if that’s what you’re scared of. Anyway, pretending won’t make it easier if I do.”

“Stop talking.”

“No, Haymitch, it’s stupid.”

“It’s against the rules, the Council would fire me.”

“Let them, they’re assholes anyway,” she says darkly. “Or are you forgetting that time they made you drug me so I could be attacked by vampire with all the roses? Because I haven’t. Get a new job, become an assassin or...a librarian, I don’t care. It’s my _birthday_ , Haymitch.” His eyes harden to stone and she hasn’t ever seen him like that, so cold and fierce and ragged in the wind. He looks like a scarecrow, all sketched out in shade of grey. 

“This is the only time I’m going to say this, _princess_ ,” he spits the word. “But I’m not your toy, not even on your birthday.” 

He leaves her behind in the cemetery on her birthday and she stays out all night thinking she might punish him for being so right about her. She is stupid and spoiled and younger than anyone, she is a princess. When she goes back, sometime in the morning, she has blood on her knuckles and vamp dust in her hair. Instinctively he takes a step back, and that hurts a whole fucking lot and he tilts his chin like he’s fighting. 

“Haymitch,” she starts, but she can’t get the words out. He watches her, wary as a cat, cold as ice. “ _Haymitch_.” He steps aside and waits, and waits, and she walks inside in silence and sleeps all day in her own bed. 

It lasts all year. Haymitch acts like he did at the beginning, he’s cruel to her and gruff and angry all the time. He’s mechanical in the training that she doesn’t really need anymore. She lets her hair grow out, dirty blonde under all that pink. She thinks up heartfelt apologies and whispers them to the air while she’s lying in her bed in her room and missing the warmth he has under all that cold. She fucks boys she meets in bars or who flirt with her at the restaurant. He drinks everything there is, disappears for days on end and comes back with new bruises and scars. They fight the bad guys and Effie pretends it’s something else.

“I’m sorry for everything terrible I do,” she tells him one day. The floor is inches deep with vampire remains like ash from a thousand fires. Haymitch has a gash down his cheek and his hair is thick with blood. “I think we should date.” 

“Don’t say you’re terrible,” Haymitch scrubs a hand through his bloody hair then wipes it down the front of his shirt. “You’re a brat but you’re...” 

“I’m the slayer,” she laughs. “I would beg for forgiveness, I would get on my knees even, but I just bought these tights.”

“You think we should _date_ ,” he says then, rolling the words out like he can taste them. “I don’t know if I could date a girl who wears a skirt to kill vampires.”

“I think you could if you tried really hard,” she smiles. “I am sorry, Haymitch. I had a lot of better words than that to tell you but they’ve disappeared right out of my head. But I think I’m sorry about covers it.”

“Maybe,” he says quietly. 

His expression doesn’t change, he holds her eyes with something strange in his. She doesn’t see him reach for her and she shrieks when he takes her hand and he laughs at her a little bit. He links their fingers together and she is on her tiptoes, poised for any sign, a string plucked, because she can’t possibly make the first move. He tugs her to him and their mouths meet open and ready, a little bit bloody with death, a little bit sharp and hot as fire. Effie laughs under his lips because she’s covered in dead vampire and her tights are sparkling under the dim light of fire and her makeup is _ridiculous_ and Haymitch is kissing her. 

“Princess,” he murmurs, pulling away slightly but close enough that his voice vibrates across her lips, her tongue. 

“Drunk,” she retorts, palming her hand through his hair, pulling it up into bloody spikes that droop at the tips. 

They go home hand in hand and bumping shoulders and Effie sleeps better than she has in a long time curled up in his sheets and his shirt and in him.


End file.
